“Felicia, are you trying to make me cry?” he said, and she was satisfied. She went across to him, as she always did when she wanted to cry herself. The floor was strewn with the tiniest boy's engine and cars, and she remembered, as she zigzagged among them, that they had been one of his very last birthday presents. “It was—Robert, what do you think the present was? I'll give you three guesses, but I advise you to guess a rooster.” “Thomas Jefferson,” murmured the minister, as one who was acquainted. “Yes, that is his name. How did you remember? She is very fond of him—he is her intimatest friend, she says. So she is under great obligations to her aunt. It's a large quilt, but it's none too large to 'cover' Thomas Jefferson. I'm going to help her buy a lining and cotton batting.” “Cracked corn will make a good lining, but cotton bat—” “Robert, this is not a comedy! If you'd seen Rebecca Mary, and the quilt, you'd call it a tragedy. You couldn't surprise me any if you told me she'd quilted it herself!” Down the road from Aunt Olivia's farm, across its southern boundary fence, romped and shouted all day long the Tony Trumbullses. No one, except possibly their mother, was quite certain how many of them there were; it was a dizzy process to take their census. They were never still, in little brown bare limbs nor shrill voices. From sunup to sundown the Tony Trumbullses raced and laughed. Certainly they were happy. The minister's wife had not dared to tell her Caller of the afternoon that the minister's children were down there shouting and racing with the little Tony Trumbullses. Dear, no!—not after Rebecca Mary in the course of conversation had said that Aunt Olivia did not countenance the Tony Trumbullses. Rebecca Mary did not say “countenance,” but it meant that. “Her aunt won't let her play with them, Robert. And she'd like to—you needn't tell me Rebecca Mary wouldn't like to! I saw it in her poor little solemn eyes. Besides, she said she asked her aunt once to let her. Robert, aunts are cruel; I never knew it before. They've no business bringing up little Rebecca Marys!” “My dear! Felicia!” But in the minister's eyes was agreement. Aunt Olivia took afternoon naps with punctilious regularity—Aunt Olivia herself was punctilious regularity. At half past one, day upon day, she hung out the dish towel, hung up her kitchen apron, and walked with unswerving course into her bedroom. There, disposed upon the dainty bed in rigid lines of unrest, she rested. The naps were often long ones.